On this Memorial Day we want to take time to recognize those who have given their lives for our country throughout its history.

Each of us has our own history with this holiday and different feelings about what it represents. UUs have a complicated relationship with Memorial Day that is explored by Michelle Richards in a UU World article from 2011. In it she says:

Perhaps we need only to go back to history, and consider where and how this celebration evolved. The very first Memorial Day, the story goes, was originated by newly freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, who gathered May 5, 1865, to express their gratitude to the Union soldiers who had perished in an open-air Confederate prison. As Yale historian David Blight describes it in his book, Race and Reunion, “the war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. But the struggle to own the meaning of Memorial Day . . . and of Civil War memory . . . had only begun.”

So on this Memorial Day, take time to stop and remember those who gave their lives for us in many different ways.

We leave you with this prayer by Rev. Charles F Flagg, and image by the Jessica Ferguson